Comment by epynonymous
7 days ago
the use case is really decentralized communication. sure connecting to wifi is easy and accessible, 4g is pretty much unlimited, but what if you just want to share files/photos directly with a group of people without having to traverse the web/someone else's hw/sw? this is basically like a detached, private web. most of the time, you probably dont care if meta has your files, but for those that just dont like centralized services, this is great. think of it like an extremely private network, why not?
I'm not against the idea, but it has already been tested with Firechat, Bridgefy, etc. during the protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
It doesn't work very well from a technical and practical point of view. Just having the app on your phone could be enough to get you charged in a totalitarian state.
So it's interesting, but it's not the use case that will democratise this type of ad-hoc network. For example, it is easier to implement end-to-end encryption on an existing infrastructure.
There must be a use case where there is no network connection, enough network participants, and that can accommodate a significant transmission delay.